In the First Person

Speakers

Georgia Blain
Georgia Blain has published four novels and numerous essays and short stories in Australia and overseas. Her
first book, Closed for Winter, is being adapted as a feature film starring Natalie Imbruglia. Her most recent
book, the memoir births deaths marriages, has recently been published.

Tim Bowden
Tim Bowden is a Sydney-based broadcaster, radio and television documentary maker, historian and author. A former
Tasmanian, he is well-known as the host of Backchat, the ABC -TV listener and viewer reaction program (1986-94).
For the last 15 years Tim Bowden has been actively broadcasting, writing and researching Australian activities
in Antarctica. Read paper

Paul Carter
Adrenalin junkie, oil rigger, motorbike fanatic, madman ... Paul Carter, author of Don't Tell Mum I Work on the Rigs, She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse, and This Is Not a Drill, has been working in the oil exploration industry since he was 18 years old. In that time, he has accumulated a wealth of hilarious and often terrifying stories.

Robert Drewe
Robert Drewe was born in Melbourne and grew up on the West Australian coast. His novels and short stories and his prizewinning memoir The Shark Net have been widely translated, won many national and international awards, and been adapted for film, television, radio and theatre around the world. Most recently Robert has edited the Best Australian Stories 2007.

Morag Fraser
From 1991 until 2003, Morag Fraser was the editor of Eureka Street magazine. She is one of the judges of the Miles Franklin Literary Award. Her many books and articles cover a wide range of topics-from biography and politics to theology and gardening. Her writing derives mostly from personal experience-her own and that of her defenceless colleagues and family.

Lincoln Hall
Lincoln Hall is one of Australia's best-known mountaineers. His high-altitude climbing career culminated in the first Australian ascent of Mt Everest in 1984 and his book White Limbo was an international bestselling account of this first Australian ascent. Dead Lucky is Lincoln Hall's own account of climbing Everest in 2006, a deadly season during which 11 people perished on the world's highest mountain.

Mark Hamlyn
Mark Hamlyn is Head of Production and Executive Producer at Film Australia. Before Mark joined Film Australia in 1998, he was head of ABC Television Documentaries and Executive Producer of ABC 's Television Science unit, where he developed the popular science series Quantum. Mark was executive producer of the ABC history series Time Frame. His programs as a Film Australia Executive Producer have included Air Australia, The Winners' Guide to the Nobel Prize and the Australian Biography series.

John Hughes
John Hughes' first book, The Idea of Home, won the 2005 NS W Premier's Award for Non-Fiction and the 2006 National
Biography Award. His second book, Someone Else: Fictional Essays, won the 2008 Adelaide Festival Award for
Innovation. He has published widely in journals and magazines throughout Australia, and is currently Librarian
at Sydney Grammar School. Read paper

Tony Kevin
Tony Kevin, a former career diplomat (1968-98), wrote the prizewinning A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X, a factual exploration of the 2001 unresolved refugee boat tragedy, and Walking the Camino, a travel memoir of a healing pilgrimage walk through Spain in 2006. He lives in Canberra with his family and continues to write, walk and garden. Read paper

Christopher Kremmer
Christopher Kremmer spent a decade in Asia working as a foreign correspondent, producing a series of award-winning
and bestselling books including The Carpet Wars, Bamboo Palace and Inhaling the Mahatma. Born in Sydney he
divides his time between India and the Southern Highlands of New South Wales. Read
paper

Kate Llewellyn
Kate Llewellyn is the author of 19 books, including the bestselling The Waterlily: A Blue Mountains Journal and Playing With Water: A Story of a Garden. She has published six books of poetry. Her travel books include Lilies, Feathers & Frangipani on the Cook Islands and New Zealand; Angels and Dark Madonnas on India and Italy; and Gorillas, Tea & Coffee: An African Sketchbook. Her memoir, The Dressmaker's Daughter, has recently been published.

John Molony
John Molony is Professor Emeritus of History, Visiting Fellow, Australian Dictionary of Biography; Chair, Emeritus
Faculty, ANU ; Adjunct Professor, Australian Catholic University. He is the author of 13 books including
The Roman Mould, Partito Popolare, Ned Kelly, Eureka, Penguin Bicentennial History of Australia, Worker Question,
and the first volume of his autobiography, Luther's Pine. Read paper

Brenda Niall
Melbourne writer Brenda Niall is the author of four award-winning biographies, including The Boyds and Judy
Cassab. Most recently she has turned her attention to her own experience in Life Class: The Education of
a Biographer. After a distinguished career as an academic at Monash University, she now writes full time.
Read paper

Alice Pung
Alice Pung is a Melbourne writer and lawyer. Her book Unpolished Gem won the 2007 Australian Book Industry Newcomer of the Year Award, and was nominated for the Victorian and NS W Premier's awards. Her work has also appeared in The Monthly, Good Weekend and Meanjin

Margaret Reynolds
Margaret Reynolds has a background in education, social policy and human rights. Margaret was elected to the
Australian Senate (1983-99) and was Minister for Local Government and the Status of Women (1987-90). Since
2004 Margaret has worked in disability policy and advocacy. Her book, Living Politics, traces her career
in Australian and international politics. Read paper

Rachel Robertson
Rachel Robertson's short fiction, reviews and articles have been published in Australian print and online journals.
She has worked as an editor, researcher and adult educator. She is currently writing a memoir about parenting
a child with autism. Rachel was joint winner of the Australian Book Review's Calibre Award for an Outstanding
Essay in 2007. Read paper

Robyn Rowland
Robyn Rowland has published eight books, five of them poetry, including Silence and Its Tongues. She has won both the Catalpa Poetry Prize and the overall Writers Prize from the Australian-Irish Heritage Association, and the Jean Stone Poetry Prize 2006. Robyn was previously Professor of Social Inquiry at Deakin University and now regularly reads/teaches in Ireland.

Tracy Ryan
Tracy Ryan was born in Western Australia, but has also lived in England and the US A. Currently on a two-year grant from the Australia Council, she has published several books of poetry and fiction. In 2008, Fremantle Press is publishing her latest book of poems, Scar Revision, and a new novel, Sweet.

Julianne Schultz
Julianne Schultz is the founding editor of Griffith REVIEW, the themed quarterly of essays, memoir, reportage and fiction published by ABC Books in conjunction with Griffith University. She is a professor in the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas at Griffith University, and the editor of A Revealed Life: Australian Writers and Their Journeys in Memoir.

Craig Sherborne
Craig Sherborne's poems and essays have appeared in most of Australia's literary journals and anthologies.
His memoir, Hoi Polloi (2005), was shortlisted for the Victorian and Queensland Premiers' Literary Awards.
His poetry collection, Necessary Evil, appeared in 2006. Muck, the sequel to Hoi Polloi, has recently been
published. Read paper

Peter Timms
Peter Timms is a writer and critic living in Hobart. He is the author of seven books, including Making Nature,
What's Wrong with Contemporary Art? and Australia's Quarter Acre. His new book, Private Lives, a social history
of Australian suburban life since Federation, will be published later this year. Read
paper

Mark TredinnickMark Tredinnick is a poet, essayist and writing teacher. The Blue Plateau, a landscape memoir, and The
Little Green Grammar Book will be published later this year. Mark's poem Eclogues won the Newcastle Poetry Prize
in 2007. He was joint winner of the Australian Book Review's Calibre Award for an Outstanding Essay in 2008.
Read paper

Nicola Walker
Nicola Walker worked at the Times Literary Supplement in London for 10 years. She returned to Australia in 2003 and was given an Australia Council grant to write a work of non-fiction about Mozambique. She has since written several articles about the country, but is still wrestling with the book.

While the National Library aims to provide balanced coverage of issues, conference papers reflect the views of individual authors. Copyright in each paper remains with the author.